Jax Stone is stranded on an alien planet, a planet that changes him. He now sees pop up windows and receives quests and is being attacked by creatures. Together with his strange companion Kala, they set forth to explore this mysterious new world. They must learn how to play this very real game, or die.

My Opinion: About 160 pages, $4.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited

In a far flung future, humanity has taken to the stars. On a colony ship, Jax is awoken from cryosleep to investigate a strange signal coming from another planet. The ships he takes to investigate is destroyed and he wakes up to find himself stranded on an alien world that is ruled by RPG mechanics. Thankfully he has a smart alec ball of light named Kala to help figure things him out.

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For 160 pages, it’s a bit overpriced at $4.99.

The first 8%, is just the setup to explain why the Jax is trapped on an alien world where future alien tech has created a world ruled by RPG mechanics. Besides introducing Jax’s sister Jill, there’s not much that you get out of this section.

Once Jax wakes up on the planet he finds he has a glowing ball of energy that he names Kala, who explains the fundamentals of living in this game world. After assigning attribute points, the story gets kind of boring until he gets to the first mini dungeon at about the 30% mark. Then the pacing of the story picks up quite a bit and there’s more action and the cast of characters in the story expands.

The story tries to combine science fiction and fantasy. Anything related to the game mechanics of the world, the status screen, magic, skills, gets a ‘science so advanced you can think of it as magic’, explanation. It’s an interesting choice with good storytelling opportunities.

While there are a few spelling, and grammar errors, of more concern are the paragraph formatting issues. Thoughts aren't separated, nor are damage notifications. I found the organization of the paragraphs to be slightly distracting.

There were also some table formatting issues in the edition I read on my phone. It’s a small technical issue I’m sure the author will fix.

Some of the dialogue feels forced. The action is ok. The big reveal at the end was pretty obvious. Overall, it’s a decent read.